


moonlight crucible

by bellmare



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Community: kh_drabble, F/M, Formatting is evil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 19:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellmare/pseuds/bellmare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The best predators are the ones you never knew were there all along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	moonlight crucible

Her grandmamma always warned her

about never talking to strangers.

 

Her grandmamma always warned her

of those ugly, leering men with their

clammy-cold hands that butterfly to her shoulders;

of smiling, sycophant monsters

in disguise all just waiting to

draw her away and lead her astray.

 

But bit by bit, Kairi forgets—

she loses herself in her impenetrable

illusions of safety, and that is when

her world falls apart.

 

Come dusk, she visits grandmamma’s cottage—

and she meets the man with haunted amber eyes,

sharp-faced as new moons.

 

“You’re lost,” he states—quiet, matter-of-fact.

 

“I’m not,” she replies as she tugs at her hood—

red as a robin’s heaving breast.

 

“Who are you?”

“A diviner, a seer from everywhere and nowhere.”

“Tell me, what does my future say?”

“Everything and nothing.”

“Do you expect me to believe?”

 

(Surrounded by cicada-cry and cricket-chirp,

by moon-song and leaf-whisper,

the magic hour draws near.)

 

“Believe what you want, or nothing at all; but beware—

the witching hour approaches. Tarry not, lest you wish

to succumb to the denizens of the darkness.”

 

Her laugh is a silver bell; stark in her voice rings

the reckless naïveté of youth.

 

“You don’t scare me,” she hums to the night—

but he is gone – perhaps swallowed by the shadows;

in his wake lingers the metal-and-ozone tang

of mystery and conspiracy.

 

(Unreal twilight,

in the forests of the night awaits the fearful dichotomy

of what is known and unknown, familiar and unfamiliar.)

 

Kairi pulls the hood – scarlet-pimpernel bright –

over her head and walks—towards the abyssal

beating heart of the living woods.

 

When she arrives, the house lies quiet, orderly—

as it’s always been. At the kitchen table, the

young diviner sits.

 

“I thought I told you to make haste—

you never know what awaits you

amongst the shadows.”

 

She smiles, a crescent-moon curve, tremulous

with a lost child’s uncertainty. “You are very kind to

be so concerned about my wellbeing.

 _Where is my grandmamma_?”

 

“You thought you would be safe here?”

“Where is—”

 

He moves, weightless, luminous,

stirring the spiralling dust; she sees the

lunar distance close between them as

he falls into orbit around her, a

hungry wolf circling its helpless prey.

 

(A scream of breaking glass; a clothespin-limbed creature,

all knotted sinew and silvery skin, all zipper-teeth and featureless face,

snarls silently in her head.)

 

She sees the crisscrossed scar, the

pebble-dull amber-gold eyes. She

smells the clean, cold scent of the moon,

feels the crimson-bright cloak fall

to the ground, resplendent as

redbird plumage flapping around her ankles.

 

Her grandmamma had warned her

about many things, but she had forgotten about one.

 

The best predators are the ones

you never knew were there all along.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Circa 2010, for kh_drabble on Livejournal. Unfortunately, most of the original formatting is lost and I have no idea how to replicate it. Curses!


End file.
